Photoshop: Manipulating Photos All Labs must be uploaded to the University s web server and permissions set properly. In this lab we will be manipulating photos using a very small subset of all of Photoshop s capabilities. 1. In Photoshop, open Flower.jpg (file->open->flower.jpg ) 2. To see where we re headed, look at the end of this lab. We re going to convert Flowers.JPG to Spring.JPG. 3. Note in the title bar that this image is at 33.3% size (it s possible yours will be different) and it s colors are stored as RGB. Resize 4. This image is huge. The first thing we want to do is resize the image. a. Under the Image menu at the top, choose Image Size b. The image is 2272x 1704 pixels (huge!) and the resolution is 96 pixels per inch. c. Change resolution to 72 pixels/inch. (Note the size in inches changes. Why?) d. At the bottom, click on Resample Image (make sure Constrain Proportions is still selected) e. Under Document Size, by inches to the right of width, click on the drop-down arrow f. Select percent g. Change the width from 100% to 50% h. Hit return. The image should get a bunch smaller on your screen. 5. We want to see the whole image. Select the magnification tool from the Toolbar. Click on the image until the top bar says 100%. Put your mouse pointer on the lower right corner and drag the image down until you can see the entire image of the elephant. Cropping Image 6. There s an awful lot of green background in this image. We want to focus on the flower, so we re going to crop away a lot of the green background. 7. Choose the crop tool from the Toolbar 8. Position the crop tool (your mouse pointer) at the top left of the area you want to select. 9. Drag it down and to the right until you ve selected the entire flower, but cropped out some of the green around the edges. (Not too much you want to leave a little background to play with. I personally left a bit more background showing on the bottom and on the right, so the flower was located a bit more towards the left top.) 10. Adjust your selection by clicking and dragging the square boxes that occur at the corners and in the center of the dotted lines that demark your selection. 11. When you are happy with your selection, click on the selection tool in the Toolbar.
12. An alert box will crop up asking, Crop this image? 13. Select Crop if you are happy, Don t Crop if you don t want to crop the image, and Cancel if you want to play more with your selection. Adjust Color 14. Under the Image menu at the top, coose Adjustments from the dropdown menu, then choose Levels 15. We can see that this looks fairly well balanced on both sides, but isn t centered as nicely as we might want. Drag the center arrow under input to the left a bit (to about 1.31). Already the color range looks nicer. 16. I might want to adjust the blue channel as well. At the top, of the adjustment box, you currently see RGB. Choose Red and adjust the middle arrow to around 1.31. Feel free to play with the red and green channel as well until you think the colors are suitable. I, for instance, might want to drag the green center arrow over to the right a tad and drag the blue right arrow over to the left a bit. 17. When happy, hit OK 18. We also might want to manipulate the brightness/contrast. Under the image menu at the top, choose brightness/contrast. 19. Drag the brightness arrow to the right to about +11 (or whatever you think makes the image look good. 20. Play with the contrast arrow as well. I personally feel the image looks good with contrast as it is (at 0), but if you like it at another level, adjust it to the level you like. 21. When happy, hit OK 22. Under Image menu choose Shadow/Highlight 23. Slide the two sliders around until you are happy (I personally might slide the shadow up to about 65-70% to see the background more clearly and/or slide the highlights up to about 7 to see more detail in the flower, which is peaking out, but this is your choice). 24. When happy, hit OK. 25. Under Images menu, choose Color balance. 26. Slide the three sliders around until you are happy with the color (Watch the color of the flower you may want to come back to this step later). 27. When happy, hit OK 28. Under Image menu, choose Hue/Saturation/Lightness 29. Slide the three sliders around until you are happy with the color 30. Finally, you can always look at Variations under the Image menu. 31. If you see a variation you like, click on it and choose OK 32. Now you should be fairly happy with your colors. If not, feel to play with these or other options under the Image menu to adjust the colors more precisely.
Undoing steps 33. You can always undo something you don t like. The simplest way is to go under the Edit Menu across the top and hit Undo. 34. As an alternative (AND THIS IS EXTREMELY USEFUL!!!!) you can use the History Window 35. If the History Window isn t visible, under the Window Menu across the top, click on History to make sure it has a check next to it. 36. In the History Window, you will see a list of the steps you have taken so far in creating your image. You can click on any one of those steps to go back to the state your image was at when you did that state. 37. You can click on each of those steps until you find the state you want to back up to, then just continue working. 38. Note that when you continue working, you lose all states that you d done after that state. You are creating a new series of steps. 39. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH THIS IS VERY USEFUL. PLEASE LEARN HOW TO USE THE HISTORY OPTION. Layers 40. We may want to make the flower stand out from the background. There are a couple of ways to do this, but 41. for now we ll use layers. 42. Choose the quick selection tool from the Toolbar. 43. With the quick select tool, click on petals in the flower until the entire flower (including the center) has been selected. 44. We want the edges to be soft, so we re going to feather the edges 45. Under Select Menu across the top, choose Modify->Feather. Make the feather be 3 pixels. 46. Now let s put the flower on its own layer. 47. Under Edit Menu across the top, choose copy. 48. Under Edit Menu across the top, choose paste 49. Look at your Layers window. If the Layers Window is not visible, Under the Window Menu across the top, click on Layers. You should then be able to see the Layers Window. 50. You should see 2 layers in your Layers Window, one that has just the flower in it and one that has the entire picture. The entire picture should be the bottom layer. The flower is on top of it, and thus changes we make to the bottom layer will not affect what we see on the second layer. 51. Let s change the background. 52. In the Layers window click on the background layer to make sure that s the layer we re changing. 53. Let s blur the background. 54. Under the Filter Menu at the top, choose Blur->Gaussean Blur. 55. In the Gaussian Blur Box, play around a bit to get the amount of blur you want. I chose 1.8 as the amount of blur I liked. Notice how the background blurs, but the flower stays nice and
sharp. That s because it is on a layer on top of the background, and changes we make to the background layer don t affect the layer wit h the flower in it. 56. I think we want to desaturate the background a bit. I can do this in a bunch of ways. a. Under the Image Menu, Choose Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation/Lightness b. Slide the Saturation slider to the left until you are happy c. Slide the lightness slider to the right to make the background lighter d. When happy Click OK 57. OR if you want to just completely desaturate the background: a. Under the Image Menu choose Adjustments->Desaturate (This is what I chose). 58. I m pretty happy with this. But We might want to add color to the flower (while leaving the center that beautiful yellow). To do so we ll repeat a lot of the steps we ve already done. 59. Click on the flower layer in the Layers Window to select the flower layer. 60. With the quick selection tool, select the yellow center. 61. Feather the selection using Select->Modify->Feather. Again, feather by about 3 pixels. 62. Put the selection on its own layer. Choose Edit->Copy, then Edit->Paste. The yellow center should be on its own top layer (so there should be 3 layers now). 63. Click on the flower layer in the Layers Window so we re adjusting the flowers and not the yellow center. 64. Under the Image Menu, chose Color Balance. 65. With Midtones selected under Tone Balance, slide the top slider towards red (to about +50). 66. Slide the middle slider towards Magenta (to about -46) 67. Slide the bottom slider towards blue (by about +5). 68. Select Highlights under Tone Balance 69. Slide the top slider to about +29 (towards Red) 70. Slide the middle slider towards Magenta by about -29 71. Slide the bottom slider towards Blue by about +20 72. Choose Shadows under Tone Balance 73. Slide towards red to about +45 74. Slide towards Magenta by about -66 75. Slide towards blue by about +95. 76. If you want to play more, feel free. If you re happy, click OK. Eraser Tool 77. Notice how the yellow center layer includes some of the flower petals in the upper right side. We might want to erase this. This is a fairly small area, so let s use the eraser tool. 78. Make sure you choose the yellow center layer in the Layers Window by clicking on it. 79. Choose the Eraser tool from the Toolbar 80. Look right under the Menus across the top of the Adobe Photoshop Window. Probably next to Brush: has a circle with a number under it and a little drop-down arrow. If it s a large number (like, say, 100), we ll want to change it to something more manageable. Click on the dropdown
arrow next to the circle. 81. Choose Soft Round 17 pixels (we want soft edges when we erase because soft edges are more forgiving. Hard edges are exact, so if we want to be precise, we d pick hard edges). 82. We want some of the layer below to show through, but perhaps not all. So we ll make our eraser s opacity be 50% (then it will be 50% opaque and 50% transparent, letting the layer below show through. 83. Now we have the eraser tool set to how we want it. Run your mouse pointer (the eraser) over the shadow petal part of the yellow center until you ve erased what you want. Adding Text 84. Finally, let s add some Text. Select the Text tool. 85. Click on the bottom right of the image and type the word, Spring. 86. It s probably pretty small. Let s make it big and obvious. 87. Make sure the Type layer is selected in your Layers window (the type layer will have a big T in it and will say Spring next to it). 88. If your Character Window isn t showing, under the Window Menu at the top, make sure Character is checked by clicking on it.
89. Change the font size (in the above window, font size is represented by two differently-sized T s and is set at 14 pt) to something much larger that will fill your image. I ended up with 256 pt, but you may want to play until it is the right size for your window. 90. If you want, change the font face (in the above window, font face is set to Arial), click on the drop-down menu arrow next to the Font face selector (the arrow next to Arial) and choose some different fonts to see what they look like. Pick one you like. I chose Century Gothic. 91. I changed my font from Regular to bold (the drop-down menu next to Regular in the above window). 92. You may wish to change the color of the font. Mine defaulted to white, but yours may default to black or another color. There are a bunch of ways to choose a color. One way is with the eye dropper. a. Click on color in the Character Box b. A new Select Text Color box will pop up. c. Run your mouse pointer over the image (the flower/yellow center/background) d. Notice how your mouse pointer changes to an eyedropper. e. Click on different places in your images. See how the color box changes to your current selection? f. When you re happy with your color, hit OK g. Notice how the text color changes to that color. h. Repeat if you re not happy with the color. 93. OR a. Click on color in the Character Box b. A new Select Text Color box will pop up. c. In the box is a bar with a rainbow and a slider. Slide the slider up and down the rainbow until you re happy with the general color range. d. Then in the large color box to the right of the rainbow bar, drag the circle around until you find a color you like. e. Repeat until happy. f. (I ended up picking a pale blue-green, R=213, G=247, B=255) g. When happy, hit OK 94. This layer was too strong for me. I wanted it to be a bit softer so I want to change the Text Layer s opacity
95. With the Text layer selected in the Layers Window, highlight 100% and change it to 80% (like above). 96. Still not happy. I want the flower to be more prominent than the word Spring. So in the layers window, I m going to drag the Text layer (Spring) to below Layer 1 but above the background. 97. Now I may want to reposition the word Spring on the page. I need to click on the selection tool in the toolbar. 98. Drag the text Spring around your image until it s in a position you like. I put mine centered on the bottom and slightly under the flower petals. 99. We re almost there. But let s add more text. We re going to put a short phrase over along the right side. 100. Click on the Text tool in the Toolbar 101. Position your mouse pointer (text pointer) near the top of the flower on the right side. Click down and, without releasing, drag the mouse down and right until you ve created a text box. 102. In the newly created text box, type Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. 103. You probably can t see much. This is because your font is still huge. Select all the text in the text box. 104. In the Character window change the text to something that lets you see all the text. I ended up with 35 pt. 105. If you want, change the color of the text. Highlight the text and play with color. I ended up with a fuscia-ping color I got from the shadows in the petals. 106. We may want to change the alignment. Click on the Paragraph tab in the Character Window. 107. With the text still highlighted click on the right alignment view. Text will now be aligned to the right. 108. Finally, you may want to change the space between lines. Go back to the Character window by clicking on the character tab. 109. Space between paragraphs is represented as 2 A s on top of each other with an arrow between them.
110. Change it to something larger than the font size you chose. I ended up with 54 pts between my paragraphs. 111. If you re happy, you re done!! We just need to save it. Saving files 112. We re assuming you re saving this for the web. If so, you have a limited number of options for saving. You can either save it as a.gif file or a.jpg file. This is a photo with a lot of gradations. As such we ll want to save it as a JPG file. 113. Under the File Menu, choose Save for Web and Devices. A huge window will pop up. 114. Make sure JPG is selected. 115. In the upper left corner, make sure the Optimized tab is selected. Then you can see the actual quality of the image. 116. Over in the left bar, try changing the quality to low, medium, high, and maximum. Notice how each of these choices affects the quality of your image. 117. Adjust the quality. Choose 10, 20,30 90,100 and see how that affects the quality of your image. 118. Be aware that the higher the quality, the larger your image will be when you save it. The larger your image is, the longer it will take to download. 119. Choose a quality that makes you happy. I found that 50-60% made me happy. 120. Hit Save 121. Change the name to SpringDY.jpg (replace DY with your initials). 122. Wow! You did it!. 123. Also Save the file as a.psd file. Under File Menu choose Save As, then call it SpringDY.psd. 124. Create a folder called Lab3, and move all your saved lab3 files into Lab3. 125. Upload to the University s web server Lab3, with the lab files inside it. 126. Make sure you have permissions set properly 127. Submit the URL of lab3 to sakai. 128. Make sure you ve got a copy of the lab3 folder on your flash drive, and remove it from the University s computer.
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